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Rader was born the eldest of four sons to William Elvin Rader, a Kansas Gas & Electricity employee, and Dorothea Mae Cook, a bookkeeper. His brothers were named Jeff, Paul and Bill. Though he was born in Pittsburgh, Kansas, he was raised in Wichita, Kansas, where he attended Riverview School and graduated from the Wichita Heights High School. In 1957, he was confirmed into the Zion Lutheran Church. By his own account and several reports, he engaged in animal torture during his early years, hanging cats and dogs in barns, and harbored a sexual fetish for women's underwear. After attending the Kansas Wesleyan University between 1965 and 1966, he was in the U.S. Air Force until 1970, stationed in Texas, Alabama, Okinawa, South Korea, Greece, and Turkey. During this time, he would peep at women undressing and burglarize houses to steal womens' underwear. Sometime during the 1970s, he married and he and his wife, Paula, had two children, a boy and a girl. When he returned to the U.S., he moved to Park City, a Wichita suburb, and attended the Butler County Community College of El Dorado, earning an associate degree in Electronics in 1973, and then enrolled with the Wichita State University the same fall, graduating in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in Administration of Justice. Throughout his life, he held down a number of different jobs, including working at a supermarket, as an assembler for a camping gear firm, briefly for Cessna and, between November 1974 to July 1988, held various positions at ADT Security, which at the time sold and installed commercial-grade alarms. In the early 1980s, he became a boy scout troop leader. During his time in that position, he would teach the boy scouts some of the knots he used in his murders. Also, in 1989, he worked as a census field operations supervisor of Wichita and was, in 1991, hired by the Compliance Department in Park City. He was still working there at the time of his arrest and was also the congregation president of the Christ Lutheran Church.

Rader's killings occured between 1974 and 1991, during which time he killed a total of 10 people (the first four of whom were killed in one night). Occasionally, he took breaks from killing. Some such times were around the time that his children were born and he didn't have enough free time to stalk potential victims. During these periods, he would engage in auto-erotic behavior to keep his urges satisfied. He enjoyed performing self-bondage, sometimes wearing a mask he used during some murders or even female underwear he had taken from his victims. Throughout his serial killing career, Rader sent several taunting letters to the police and media in which he graphically described his murders. The first, written in October 1974, was stashed inside an engineering book in the Wichita Public Library. In 1978, he sent another to Wichita-based TV station KAKE in which he also suggested a number of names for himself, such as "The Wichita Strangler", "The Wichita Hangman", "The Asphyxiater" and, the name the public came to know him by, "The BTK Killer", signifying his M.O.: "Bind, Torture, Kill". The next letters did not come until later. In 2004, the newspaper The Wichita Eagle received a letter from someone using the return address "Bill Thomas Killman". The writer of the letter claimed responsibility for the September 16, 1986 murder of Vicki Wegerle through a series of crime scene photos, details about the murder, and a photocopy of her driver's license. Prior to this, the murder had not definitely been tied to BTK.

KAKE also received a word puzzle containing words like "FANTASIES", "REALTOR", "SERVICEMAN" and "TELEPHONE" in May 2004. On December 8 of 2004, Rader made calls to a number of companies, including KAKE TV, to tell them the location of a package he had left for the authorities. It took him a while to get responders' attention because when he instroduced himself as BTK, they all thought it was a prank call and hung up on him. One postcard sent to KAKE used the alias "Happ Kakemann" and the station's own address as return address. On February 16, 2005, Fox TV station KSAS in Wichita were sent a floppy disk. A forensic analysis revealed that it had been used by the Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita and contained a reference to the name "Dennis". An Internet search revealed that Dennis Rader was the president of the church council. On February 25, 2005, he was arrested and formally charged on February 28. As Kansas did not have capital punishment at the time of Rader's murders, he was sentenced to 10 consecutive life sentences. He is currently serving this time in the El Dorado Correctional Facility and is not eligible for release before February 26, 2180. He is held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day, only being released one hour a day for yard exercise and is allowed three showers a week. Through good behavior, he has been allowed a few privileges such as access to television, radio, and magazines.

Rader usually targeted women, though he did kill or attempt to kill men and children on a few occasions. He would enter his victim's homes through home invasions. The kills were highly premeditated, as he would stalk them beforehand, bring various items with him to use for the kill and the break-in, like duct tape, rope, and a screwdriver, cut off the phone lines to prevent the victims calling for help, etc. He did not, however, make a habit of bringing a "hit kit" until after his first few murders, initially using objects from the house. He would use a .22-caliber Colt Woodsman handgun (with which he shot Kevin Bright by incident) and a .357 Magnum to threaten his victims and gain control of them. On two occasions, he also masturbated on the victims' bodies. The victims were typically tied up, sometimes using items from their houses, and strangled. He also took souvenirs, such as underwear from his female victims, driver's licenses, and personal possessions. He had a habit of nicknaming his home invasion plans in a manner similar to the way military operations are codenamed; the Kathryn Bright home invasion was called "Project Lights Out" and Vicki Wegerle's murder "Project Piano" because he liked listening to her playing.

After the murder of Dolores Davis, FBI profiler John Douglas assumed that BTK had either been arrested or had died. It could be assumed, though erroneously, that the pictures, drawings, and memories would be sufficient enough to complete his fantasy. When the BTK killer began communicating again, the BAU developed a strategy to keep him communicating by issuing press releases. BTK took the bait.

Joseph Otero, 38 (father; suffocated with a plastic bag over his head)

Julie Otero, 33 (mother; strangled with rope)

Joseph Otero II, 9 (son; suffocated with a plastic bag)

Josephine Otero, 11 (daughter; was hung with rope and her body masturbated on)

April 4: Kathryn Bright and her brother Kevin:

Kathryn Bright, 21 (intended to strangle, but was stabbed as she struggled too much)

Kevin Bright, 19 (incidental; shot twice in the head with a .22; survived)

1977:

March 17: Shirley Vian Relford, 24 (suffocated with a plastic bag over her head)

December 8: Nancy Fox, 25 (was tied up and strangled with a belt and her body masturbated on)

April 28, 1979: Anna Williams, 53 (intended; Rader gave up as she came home much later than he expected)

April 27, 1985: Marine Hedge (was manually strangled)

September 16, 1986: Vicki Wegerle, 28 (was tied up, strangled to the point of fatal injury with a nylon stocking and left for dead)

January 19, 1991: Dolores Davis, 62 (strangled with pantyhose)

Note: Rader also stalked two women in the 1980s and another in the 1990s. He also admitted during interrogation that he had planned to kill again and had even set October 2004 as the date, though he never carried it out.

Rader is often referenced on Criminal Minds and appears to have been the primary inspiration for Walter Kern, the Keystone Killer, as they both typically targeted women, killed by strangling them (though Kern later used suffocation, which Rader also used on two members of the Otero family), both served in the U.S. Air Force for some time, and both worked for alarm companies for some time until 1988. Additionally, both communicated extensively with the police, named themselves in the media, and stopped killing only to return in the present (though Kern continued killing while Rader only wrote letters). In Tabula Rasa, during the trial of Brian Matloff, his attorney names BTK as an example of times when profiling failed, referring to when a profile[1] stating that Rader would be divorced and impotent[2] was made while he in actuality was married and had children. Copycat serial killer Eric Olson also copied Rader's M.O. during one of his murders, though he raped that victim while Rader did not do that to any of his victims.

In Omnivore, Hotch compares the Reaper to BTK and the Zodiac Killer, describing them as "highly intelligent, disciplined, sadistic killers who name themselves in the press". Also, like the Reaper (according to Reid), BTK contacted the press in order to correct a statement in a book written about him (an assumption that he became inactive after being arrested for an unrelated charge or simply died), which would lead to his arrest. In Remembrance of Things Past, Hotch names BTK along with the Grim Sleeper as an example of serial killers who suddenly stop killing and return several years later, referring to how Rader committed his last known murder in 1991 and started communicating with the police in 2004 after over a decade of silence.

In What Happens at Home, Rader was mentioned alongside Kenneth Bianchi as an example of serial killers who have some kind of law enforcement job, referring to when he worked as a compliance officer in Park City, Kansas. Rader was mentioned again in Pay It Forward as an example of serial killers who go dormant for long periods of time or completely quit. He was mentioned once again in The Black Queen by Reid, who cited his sixteen-year-long dormancy before resurfacing to claim credit for the BTK murders as a comparison to that of the prominent unsub's own motivations.

↑The profile doesn't explicitly state that he was impotent, though it states that he would have been sexually immature. Nor does it state that he was divorced; in fact, it says that he would never have been married.